An Investigation into the Effects of Pragmatic Instruction and Feedback on the Development of Pragmatic Competence of Korean University Students

Despite the ongoing interest in the effects of L2 pragmatic instruction, there is a paucity of empirical studies investigating the effects of pragmatic instruction on Korean learners of English. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and durability of pragmatic instruction and feedback on the pragmatic competence of Korean university students regarding the speech act of suggestions. A total of 157 participants were randomly assigned to four different instructional groups who received either explicit or implicit instruction with explicit/implicit feedback over six sessions. The findings suggest that the four different types of instruction and feedback yielded positive outcomes in the learning of the pragmatic features of suggestions, also demonstrating that these outcomes were shown to be durable over time. Further analysis revealed that the participants utilized more pragmatically correct suggestions by adopting formulaic expressions and an appropriate level of directness in their realizations of suggestions. Pedagogical implications drawn from the results of this study are also discussed.